Jake Elwes & Me the Drag Queen
Zizi & Me - Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better), 2020
4K Digital Video with sound - 4min 55sec
‘Zizi & Me’ is a double act between drag queen 'Me The Drag Queen', and a deepfake (A.I.) clone of 'Me The Drag Queen'. By training a neural network* on filmed footage this network learnt to construct a virtual body that can be controlled by feeding it new reference movements. The first act 'Anything You Can Do (I Can Do Better)’ satirizes the idea that an AI is something that we might mistake for a human. Through drag performance, we aim to use cabaret and musical theatre to challenge narratives surrounding A.I. and society.
*Video-to-Video Synthesis (2018)
The Zizi Project (2019 - ongoing) is a collection of works by Jake Elwes exploring the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and drag performance. Drag challenges gender and explores otherness, while A.I. is often mystified as a concept and tool, and is complicit in reproducing social bias. Zizi combines these themes through a deepfake, synthesised drag identity created using machine learning. The project explores what AI can teach us about drag, and what drag can teach us about A.I.
*Video-to-Video Synthesis (2018)
The Zizi Project (2019 - ongoing) is a collection of works by Jake Elwes exploring the intersection of Artificial Intelligence (A.I.) and drag performance. Drag challenges gender and explores otherness, while A.I. is often mystified as a concept and tool, and is complicit in reproducing social bias. Zizi combines these themes through a deepfake, synthesised drag identity created using machine learning. The project explores what AI can teach us about drag, and what drag can teach us about A.I.
About the artist:
Jake Elwes
www.jakeelwes.com | www.zizi.ai | @jakeelwes
Jake Elwes (b.1993) is a media artist living and working in London. They studied at The Slade School of Fine Art, UCL (2013-17). Searching for poetry and narrative in the success and failures of AI systems, Jake Elwes investigates the aesthetics and ethics inherent to AI. Elwes’ practice makes use of the sophistication of machine learning, while finding illuminating qualities in its limitations. Across projects that encompass moving-image installation, sound and performance, Elwes seeks to queer datasets, demystifying and subverting predominantly cisgender and straight AI systems. While it may seem like the AI is a creative collaborator, Elwes is careful to point out that the AI has neither intentionality or agency; it is a neutral agent existing within a human framework. Their current works in the Zizi Project explore AI bias by queering datasets with drag performers which simultaneously demystify and subvert AI systems.
Jake's work has been exhibited in museums and galleries internationally, including the ZKM, Karlsruhe, Germany; TANK Museum, Shanghai; Today Art Museum, Beijing; CyFest, Venice; Edinburgh Futures Institute, UK; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany; New Contemporaries 2017, UK; Ars Electronica, Austria; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; LABoral Centro, Spain; Nature Morte, Delhi, India; RMIT Gallery, Australia; Centre for the Future of Intelligence, UK and they have been featured on TV: ZDF aspekte (Germany) and the BBC Arts (UK). |